As you know, with PopGraine, we are interested in any kind of art, living art, performing art, visual art, etc. So, when we had the opportunity to assist at the Seoul Light DDP Autumn 2023, we took our chance. From August 31st to September 10th, the Seoul Light DDP 2023, in the same place, same date the Fashion Week was held. So, this place gathers a lot of different people, with different kinds of interests: the new fashionistas/social media influencers, the clothes designers, the celebrities, and the onlookers. But first, let us introduce you to this place.

(source: https://ddp.or.kr/)

Welcome to Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP).

DDP is a multi-cultural complex located at Dongdaemun History & Culture Park Station in Seoul, Korea. Since its foundation on March 21, 2014, DDP has staged diverse cultural events including exhibitions, fashion shows, product launch shows, forums, conferences, and various cultural events. DDP is where new design trends begin and cultures are exchanged. It is a venue that introduces new products and fashion trends, that shares knowledge through exhibitions, and that offers diverse contents to experience new design. Through these activities, DDP will be the hub of the design and fashion industry that will expand to Asia and the world.

We join the DDP at the beginning of the afternoon, so we decide to spend our time doing smart things before the different shows. We start to explore the different exhibitions, “To The Future,” created in collaboration with the 20 selected designers and artists, is a special exhibition that reinterprets five keywords representing future society as artworks. We visited Dongdaemun History Museum. The museum preserves and displays relics discovered during the construction of Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) and Dongdaemun History & Culture Park and commemorates the historical value of the former Dongdaemun Stadium as a venue. The excavation resulted in the discovery of the wall of Hanyang Fortress, the protruding Chiseong post, and the floodgate Igan Sumun as well as the Joseon dynasty military facilities and related artifacts, which had been previously believed to have been lost. And we fall on another exhibition, related to the fashion week, the Dynamite Looks, an exhibition about the outfits wearing by BTS’s members during the Dynamite area. The time flies and the show is about to begin. The place was already crowded in the afternoon but when the night falls there is no space between people, it is a human wave who’s pressing here to watch this experiment.

Seoul Light DDP 2023 Autumn “Digital Nature”

“Witness a fresh, artistic approach to Mother Nature through digital technology”

Seoul Light DDP 2023 started from the question, “Can real nature that has existed since the beginning of time coexist with technological nature created by humans?”

We seek to discover the “sense of coexistence” that allows humans and nature to interchange and coexist, rather than unilaterally controlling and dominating nature.

We were able to assist in two shows:

● Miguel Chevalier

Chevalier’s works predominantly explore the realm of “nature.” He poetically and metaphorically approaches the process of coexistence and enrichment between nature and artificial elements in the modern days. With a research process that began in the late 1990s, he combines observations of the plant world with the imaginative power of digital technology to create new virtual gardens.

“Meta-Nature AI” investigates how real nature and technological nature can coexist in a poetic and metaphorical approach to show the relationship between these two realms. Based on the process he began at the end of the 1990s, “A Virtual Garden,” a part of “Meta-Nature AI,” is a space created as a result of studying the real world of plants. This work was created in the process of transforming his imaginative concepts into the digital world. The virtual garden is made by mixing attributes of a database of a variety of trees, leaves, and flowers with AI-generated images. The garden beautifully illustrates a wide array of artificial lives that bloom and fall as different seasons come and go. Observe the digital art garden in rich, bright colors by Miguel Chevalier and develop a sense of coexistence of real nature and technological nature.

• Dan Acher x

Dan Acher refers to himself as an ‘artivist’ connecting people, climate, technology, and environmental issues. Acher uses technology to connect people through art and to awaken them to climate changes and environmental concerns.

He uses the city as a canvas to create events and situations that generate powerful experiences for people. What is society, and what is the sense of belonging? Dan Acher has posed this question on himself for a long time and in search of an answer, he has traveled to different countries. ‘Borealis’ Dan Acher has been inspired by nature to create the Northern Lights, Borealis. The work is a convergence of technology and nature. Acher uses the technology of the 21st century to re-create nature as closely as possible. The work is symbolic for aurora and it is presented together with sound.

These two works were absolutely majestic, the DDP lends itself truly to this type of experience and these works are also perfectly adaptable to the venue where they are displayed. As for the subject, we are not sure it will have an impact on the spectators present. We took the time to observe the behaviors and we noticed that the spectators kept their eyes glued to their phone screens in order not to miss a single moment of the spectacle unfolding before their eyes. Yet they seem to have only seen it through their screens. This is at least what we observed regarding Michel Chevallier’s work. For Borealis, the installation itself (the projectors) is visible, atop a hill, beams of light are projected downward and into the sky. As spectators, we then move amidst the aurora, sometimes above our heads, sometimes within arm’s reach. The result is stunning. The audience also rushes to observe the reproduction of this natural phenomenon, many people take photos in the midst of it and only pass through this landscape without even stopping to contemplate it. Being able to say that they were present seems more important than the message the artists are trying to convey.